I remember Adrian's first day at Gordonstoun - 40 something years ago, well done mate - you did alright! Cocoa Navy style - just like your Dad. God bless - regards Ian
I needed to hear the nest building bit. I often feel guilty for not often making music. But I unwind building etc It now feels OK to just fiddle around with it all
I could listen to this man talk for 6 hours and it would never be enough. Such a legend... one of the coolest nerds ever I always feel smarter by osmosis.
another great episode, and he's one of your best guests ever I could watch him talk about gear all day the MiniBrute vid you did with him and the Echoplex was a classic on a strange note, your closing statements being at the end of 2019 are wild to hear now (June 2020) in these weird times times of viral pandemic spread, police brutality and racial issue protests all over, and other stuff - if you only knew at the time that what you said was prescient in a way I'm trying to remember what I was pondering on at the time, but no one could have predicted how crazy 2020 would become anyway, keep up the great shows :-)
Add pending thermonuclear Apocalypse to your list above and it's almost like he was goading the effing universe for a rise. Ho hum.. synths for global peace and harmony.
Loved the Squarepusher discussion at the beginning, I fell down that rabbit hole in 2001 / 2002 after stumbling upon the Red Hot Car vinyl and then massively getting into Do You Know Squarepusher. Also, Burningn'n Tree. Definitely opened my mind to the different rhythms in musssssssss-sic.
No waaaaayyyy! Thumbs up before it even started 😄👍 I think I'd be very Chris Farley trying to interview him. "Do you remember when you were playing with portishead?" "Yeah..." "That was cool"... "I listened to Dummy a lot. Like every day." "Alright. Soooo, it's been nice" 😆 1:18:00 I think that was deadmau5 and Toronto Okay, one more edit... There isn't a single person watching this for one and a half hours that considers a firmware update boring 😄 This was awesome man! I had it playing while trying to finish setting up the studio space and making sound absorption panels. It was better motivation than coffee ✌️👍
So many interesting topics: 808s, Billie Eilish, Apocalypse Now, J.S. Bach, Wendy Carlos, Eurorack, archiving, the Keystep, lots and lots of synths... and knowing where to tap. Brilliant, gents.
Adrian is such a chill and respectful man in every interview I see him in. What a great ambassador for music. Such an interesting head on those shoulders. I still watch Portishead Live in NYC since 1995.
The Bach/synthesis works both ways I find: Not only do synthesizers sound great playing Bach but when using a synthesizer, I tend to naturally make music that sounds very much like Bach. But perhaps it’s more about the step sequencer and the extreme linear quality of melodies they are so good at making :)
Not sure why they picked the Eurorack format to discuss the downside of not having a uniform long-standing personal instrument due to things being switched around. Isn’t that the essence of modulars in general? Serge, Buchla, 5U, Eurorack... it’s all interchangeable and it’s up to each person to decide whether to keep it the way it is or to change it up. Nothing to do with Eurorack and everything to do with what “modular” synthesizers are. Anyways I enjoyed hearing what Adrian Utley had to say. Awesome guy.
Another great episode! 'Evening in the Palace of Reason' by James R Gaines is a great book about the encounter between J S Bach and Frederick the Great (and is one of my favorite books about Bach full stop).
Great discussion. Thank you. Would have liked to know the exact trick for using the voltage processors to get a high-pass out of the 2600. Google is not forthcoming. Anyone know?
This is great stuff. As a one-man-and-a-tape-machine guy myself, it’s great to listen to the different approaches and philosophies others have to the process.
34:26 You guys are probably talking about Béla Bartók's _Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta_ composed in 1936 and used extensively in The Shining.
I witness an Adrian Utley chat hit my feed, I click it. That is an unspoken contractual obligation I feel for few other artists. This leisurely ample chat provides 100% of my dietary value of vitamin AU for... the month? My one gripe - minor, mind you - is that the camera was not pivoted to capture the other gear discussed absent from its fixed view.
Nice when the penny drops regarding it difficult to form a regular working relationship when forever changing around a eurorack system. Then again many a good piece has been made during a metamorphosis.
adrian!... there are only a few records that are made to last.. portishead with all their albums will forever be the number one deeply emotional impact reference in sound for me.
I've spent years downsizing my coillection, and it honestly feels better and better each time. I think one day I'll end up with just a PO KO, a DX7 and a PSS270 - to make the best music I've ever made!
midierror I used to have a setup with 13-15 synths and constantly got bogged down by overchoice. Now I have a total of 4 with a sampler and 1 drum machine. 2 mono synths, 1 analog poly and 1 digital poly. Never been more inspired. I will have 6 soon because I finally broke down and decided to broke my “no more than 4” rule for a couple of new synths coming out.
Thank you so much for this ... spent 4hrs & 2 Btls of Red watching this ... Every ref u guys made I wandered round the net searching for it ... so much info. Thank you.
I love these interviews - amazing depth of knowledge (Alex and the interviewees) but honestly would love to hear more from the interviewees. I absolutely love your content and have spent a lot of money as a result of your vids but when it comes to these interviews I really want to hear more from the guests. I’m in no position to give advice but you (and many others like Mr N Batt) are in such a great position to give some airtime to the greats of synth history and I want to hear more from them... Fireside chats are fine but I want to know more about the legends. But one of my favorite channels, so feels like I’m biting the feeding hand.
mylarmelodies it was a bit ranty of me - was suggesting more interview less 2 way conversation - but that’s really just a personal style pref. Keep up the fab work...
@@mylarmelodies Just let the guest speak, don't meddle in. It's just plain rude and annoying. I like your podcast but this really gets on my nerves. You get to talk to some really heavyweight people, don't mess that up.
U guys were talking about the staying alive drum track. It’s actually a 2 bar tape loop taken from ‘night fever’.look it up on wikipi. (Some overdubs also i guess)Anyways, awesome interview thank u.
Very interesting discussion. Loved Portishead in the 90's...still love listening to them. Sensible approach...use what you have and try focussing on one instrument at a time...I have a very simple budget setup but can still make lots of interesting sounds with it. Liked and shared.
Can I get rid of my unused kit? Nothing is unused. It's just a matter of time though. Maybe I have 4 instruments together for a project. A "project" is a dumb term, a project is the setup for me. I might do 3 or 4 tracks with that setup. And if an instrument/seq is working well in that project, and I'm still into it, feel like I haven't figured it all out, or it is transparent, or whatever, I'll use it in the next project, but then I'll swap out instruments that resisted me, or are broken in a certain way, they're out. And in the middle of a project, if I need something, I fly it in. I like little things for this type of thing. Little Volcas, sp404, tenori, kp3+. They just fly in for a particular job, they contribute what they do, and that pattern or sound is in the project. Sometimes, they perform so well, they take center stage, and the nature of the project changes. You were talking to Adrian about having a purpose, a destination in mind, and it is all about getting there, realizing that. Not my thing at all. I am truly experimental, and not so much that I produce unlistenable noise (at least none of it escapes), I'm heavy into hooks and pop, but I never know how I'm going to achieve that. I start with an ensemble of instruments, and just start working. That can mean I lead off with a melody, a harmonic progression, a beat, and all of that can be played or sampled, and it just goes from there. It usually takes a session to get to something that is interesting, and that thing usually has nothing to do with what I started with, its just a matter of getting it going. A huge advancement for me was letting that initial sketch stuff go, I used to look at it like I'd invested that time, I need return on that investment. But the actually good idea IS the return on investment, and those sketches need to go away or they will turn into a millstone around your neck. Very hard for me to let go of that, but I'm on it now. And in your outro, you said basically this, making this comment essentially redundant. Yeah.
Love this! The only reason I realised this was a video podcast, despite previously checking it out briefly, was because I fell asleep watching another video late at night, then this came on automatically afterwards and I woke up during the video interview! I wonder if other would-be watchers don't realise it's video content! I rewound and started from the beginning again and although I do enjoy your articulate passion and the extended intro, perhaps if you could stretch your production to shoot the intro as a piece to camera or pad it out a bit with some B roll you may reach more video visitors who, like me, don't realise this is a video show. At least consider if a partly video intro may make better represent the effective effort you've put in to getting the interview shot in the first place.
Speaking of Abbey Road, the Moog on Maxwells Silver Hammer changed my life as a kid. I had never heard anything like it and Ive been in love with synths ever since. Also Apocalypse Now - one of the best films and soundtracks ever.
For anyone wondering what's on the other side of Adrian's studio here's another interview with him where's he's seated next to some rather nice toys... ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-NNZ5ONauK5Y.html
I'm glad he didn't go all dogma on the timing thing. There's a time for loose timing and a time for a grid. It's all in the concept and personal taste. It's the same with the idea of less is more... less is less and more is more, why not both?
And that's the downside of the ever-evolving eurocrack franken-system... IMHO The only genuine way to have that nostalgic, intimate, and lifelong connection with eurocrack is to essentially build each system around just one brand, and stick with that brand, - i've been buying doepfer since around '96,- starting with the 404, which still functions btw, unlike my moog GM, - and i wouldn't sell my systems for anything.. I've pimped the modules aesthetically and internally quite a bit though... ~ digital also, imposes too much character within eurocrack AFAIC, - I think the vc-bit-crusher and my kenton converters are the only digital components to my systems ~ great interview, - i remember reading articles in *Home and Studio Recordings*, or was it *Recording Musician*?, with Adrian being interviewed, - long before the *portishead* days, and as i recall, they were just as insightful then as they are now... much appreciated
Great episode Alex, Love Adrian and Geoff . Such great musicians and Adrian working with the radiophonic workshop was so inspiring Like a kid a sweatshop .
"...heading into the next decade, the twenties! What will it bring? Hopefully not death and destruction!" "I'll take well-wishes that age like fine wine, Alex." Here's to 2021
